It's Playing, Just With Researchhttps://playingwithresearch.com
Dr. Carrie's Research OutreachThu, 01 Dec 2016 02:18:20 +0000enhourly1http://wordpress.com/https://secure.gravatar.com/blavatar/78b5c1ec92f2425e66624f1e135ad8d7?s=96&d=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.wp.com%2Fi%2Fbuttonw-com.pngIt's Playing, Just With Researchhttps://playingwithresearch.com
The Pop Cultures Lens on Sherlockhttps://playingwithresearch.com/2016/11/25/the-pop-cultures-lens-on-sherlock/
https://playingwithresearch.com/2016/11/25/the-pop-cultures-lens-on-sherlock/#respondFri, 25 Nov 2016 16:43:56 +0000http://playingwithresearch.com/?p=3870]]>In the thirty-first episode of The Pop Culture Lens podcast, Christopher Olson and I welcome friend of the podcast, and Sherlockian, Malynnda Johnson to discuss the indelible nature of famous British detective, Sherlock Holmes.

In this episode, Malynnda shares her extensive fan-based knowledge of the classic private investigator as the conversation considers the influence Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had on the world when he created the inhabitants of 221B Baker Street. Holmes’ continuing influence on today’s world provides the crux of the discussion, as he is considered to be an inspiration for various genres, from detective to superhero. Furthermore, the trio examine how the fandom around Holmes reflects the fandoms that would follow, and what the nature of the fandom says about the relationship between fans and the canon’s creator(s).

Many thanks goes out to production assistant, Jean-Michel Berthiaume, for helping produce this episode.

As always, you are encouraged to become a part of this conversation by visiting any of the podcast’s social media sites. You can also talk with Christopher Olson on Twitter (@chrstphrolson) and at his academic blog seemsobvioustome.wordpress.com. And you can talk to me on Twitter (@mediaoracle).

]]>https://playingwithresearch.com/2016/11/25/the-pop-cultures-lens-on-sherlock/feed/0sherlock-holmes-wikimedia-4-cropcarrielynnreinhardGendering Robots: A Class Discussionhttps://playingwithresearch.com/2016/11/20/gendering-robots-a-class-discussion/
https://playingwithresearch.com/2016/11/20/gendering-robots-a-class-discussion/#respondSun, 20 Nov 2016 18:00:56 +0000http://playingwithresearch.com/?p=3751]]>The next research project I hope to work on looks at how people make sense of robots. I am particularly interested in how people apply gendered assumptions and attributions to robots or artificial agents, and how apply those assumptions then impact how people engage with robots. In a sense, robots have become another medium as they are another conduit through which we communicate our social and cultural values while we communicate to them and through them to each other. In this regard, understanding how we perceive them helps us to understand how we are already using them as a conduit for the communication of these values.

Growing out of work my partner and I have done on BMO from Adventure Time and Vocaloid Hatsune Miku, I have started talking to my students about this topic to see how they react to robots. I’ve been showing my students images of different robots, asking them to ascribe a gender to the robot, and then following up with what leads them to make such attributions.

For example, this past week I showed 15 images of robots from pop culture and asked my students about how they reacted to the robots as gendered entities. This discussion was part of our day covering gender identity as a social identity. After my students did their presentation defining gender compared to sex, and discussing gender fluidity and the different conceptualizations of gender, I walked them through these images, and had them write down their quick reactions. I gave them only about 30 seconds to write down what gender they thought the robot had and what led them to assign that gender. I told them I wanted what first came to mind when they saw the image, assuring them that there were no right or wrong answers.

Their answers, and our discussion of their answers, has helped me get a better sense on what leads to these gendered assumptions and attributions. Because I am hoping to expand on this idea for my next research project, I thought I would share the results here as well as my thoughts on what it all means. The following are the images I showed my students, in the order that I showed them (starting with Ava from Ex Machina), plus some findings about how they responded to those images.

The students unanimously labeled Ava and Rosie as women, and Baymax, Chappie and Data as men. Their reasoning for Ava focused primarily on her body features, which they referred to as “her” breasts, soft faces, curves and little hands; some also suggested that the way she was lying down in the image was feminine. For Rosie, their focus was primarily on her attire, given the stereotypical maid’s outfit she is depicted in; although others said it was due to her perceived attitude given her body posture, or her perceived function given that she was cleaning.

For Baymax, they also focused on the robot’s body, associating it with an older man’s body because they thought “he” had a beer belly. Others ascribed masculinity to the robot given the context of the image; that is, because the robot is surrounded by elements of sports and technology in the image. When it came to Chappie, they reasoned that the image depicted his attitude as being strong, without fear, and ready to fight. They also apparently saw aspects of the robot’s body as supporting that reason, saying “he” was muscular with a broad chest. The argument for Data also focused on the robot’s body, but primarily on his short hair or chiselled face. However, two students did recognize the character and referred to Data’s position in the television show as the basis of their judgment.

This last reasoning is something to explore for a moment. All of these characters come from different time periods in pop culture, and my students did not recognize many of them. Even when they did recognize the character, they did not always reason that the character had a specific gender that aligned with the character’s depiction in that text. For example, with Eve, two people assigned a feminine identity because of seeing the movie Wall-E, but one person said the robot had no specific gender for this same reason. A similar result happened for R2-D2, where some argued for their reasoning based on seeing Star Wars, but one person did not assign a masculine identity for the same reason. This discrepancy of reasoning from the text but not arriving at the same interpretation suggests a need to further consider how much these pop cultural texts impact gendered assumptions and attributions.

Overall, Ava, Maria, Rosie and Eve were all seen primarily as feminine, while the rest, except one, were seen primarily as masculine. The one holdout was Twiki, as the class was split between assigning a masculine or feminine gender identity to the robot. Both sides argued their reasons based on the robot’s body features. The difference apparently came down to the following: if they focused on the robot’s “hair,” they ascribed feminine; but if they focused on the robot’s “broad shoulders,” they ascribed masculine.

Also, across all the reasons given by the students, several key themes recurred. First and foremost was their focus on the robot’s body features, suggesting that they were looking for analogies to human biology to make their determination. This reason suggests the primacy of biological determinism linking sexual characteristics to gender identity.

Other reasons suggest the activation of social and culturally constructed values and stereotypes about gender. Some argued for the robot’s appearance as signaled by its attire, suggesting that certain clothes or appearances are meant for a certain gender (e.g. skirts for women, dirtiness for men). Others looked at the behavior of the robot in the image and inferred its attitude, which was then categorized based on gender stereotypes (e.g. sexually suggestive for women, strong and rugged for men). Another reasoning focused on the aesthetic appearance of the robot, chiefly in its coloring, with certain colors being seen as more masculine than feminine. Others assumed that the robot had a specific function or job, and these functions aligned with a certain gender (e.g. maid for women, army for men).

Finally, some argued that robots, by default, were masculine. For some robots, the students’ reason came down to simply that the entity in the image was a robot. This default suggests the stereotype labeling science and technology as a masculine hobby or professional. This association, then, could lead people to assume that, in the absence of strong visual signifiers for biological determinism or sociocultural stereotypes (based on attire, attitude, aesthetics or function), robots are masculine. This reasoning could also reflect a Western tendency in language to default to masculine, thereby othering the feminine. This reasoning could also be why the majority of robots in pop culture (at least in Western cultures) appear to be assumed as masculine.

This class discussion was very illuminating for me, especially in uncovering these themes in their reasons for gendering robots. And these reasons seem to link what other researchers have found, such as in this article, indicating that I need to look for more such work to see if more overlaps exist. More than that, this discussion has also helped invigorate my interest in moving forward on a formal research study for this project.

My theory is that the main reason to develop gendered robots is same reason for anthropomorphizing them: to ease human-robot interactions. It appears that people may perceive a robot as gendered given the robot’s appearance, performance or function/role as aligning with specific socially and culturally constructed norms (as even the biological determinism argue relies on the sociocultural construction linking biology and gender). Overall, the idea of gendering robots is to make people more comfortable when interacting with robots by drawing on common social and cultural values about gender as a means to structure the interaction.

I believe I could test this theory through an IAT (implicit association test) or a card sorting task (similar to one I did during grad school with a mentor and some peers). Similar to the generation of this class discussion, I could show people images of robots and ask them to categorize or label the robots based on gendered assumptions and attributions. I could then have ask the people to explain their categorization scheme, which would test to see if their explanations contain those three reasons of appearance, performance, and function/role, or to see if other reasons emerge. I could then ask them how their gendered perception impacts how they would engage with the robots of each category. This could also be done with just the audio of robots or AI entities speaking.

I think this could be very interesting, and I would love to collaborate on this project. I just have a book to write first on my fractured fandom project.

The Tensions in Exorcism Cinema project began in 2013, when my partner Christopher J. Olson (Seems Obvious to Me) and I watched the film The Possessionand noted how common it seemed for women to be the victim of possession who needed to be saved through exorcism. We wondered, is that true of all exorcism films? So we started researching these films and watching as many as we could get our hands on. While not every film focused on women as the possessed threat, the majority did, and those that didn’t featured a possessed person of other minority groups, such as people of color or the nonheteronormative.

Realizing this pattern, we wrote a book, and now it is coming out from Lexington Books, a subsidiary of Rowman and Littlefield, called Possessed Women, Haunted States: Cultural Tensions in Exorcism Cinema. The book has been published this month (November 2016) and you can order it now directly from the publisher or from your favorite online retailer (such as Amazon and Barnes and Noble). You can also follow the book on Goodreads, where you can enter to win a free copy. The giveaway runs from November 16-23. Follow this link or use the widget below to enter!

Since the release of The Exorcist in 1973, there has been a surge of movies depicting young women becoming possessed by a demonic force that only male religious figures can exorcise, thereby saving the women from eventual damnation. This book considers the history of exorcism cinema by analyzing how the traditional exorcism narrative established in The Exorcist recurs across the exorcism subgenre, with only the rare film deviating from this structure.

The analysis presented in this book uses various cultural and critical theories to examine how depictions of possession and exorcism reflect, reinforce or challenge prevailing social, cultural, and historical views of women, minorities, and homosexuals. In particular, exorcism films appear to explore tensions or fears regarding empowered and sexually active women, and frequently reinforce the belief that such individuals must be subjugated and disempowered so that they no longer pose a threat to themselves or those around them. Even more recent films produced after the emergence of third wave feminism typically reflect this concern about women. In fact, exorcism films very rarely present empowered women and feminine sexuality as nonthreatening.

In examining the exorcism subgenre, this book looks at films that have received little to no critical scrutiny regarding how they relate to and comment on the historical periods in which they were initially produced and received. Given the results of this analysis, this book reveals the necessity of examining how possession and exorcism are portrayed onscreen and elsewhere in popular culture.

And here are some advance reviews of the book.

Olson and Reinhard offer a compelling look at the history and cultural politics of exorcism films in this well argued, adeptly researched study.— Blair Davis, DePaul University, author of The Battle for the Bs: 1950s Hollywood and the Rebirth of Low-Budget Cinema

Possessed Women, Haunted States skillfully studies the cultural politics of an under-explored strand of horror cinema. Ranging from The Exorcist through to recent ‘found footage’ movies, as well as taking a very welcome, inclusive approach to parody, Christopher Olson and CarrieLynn Reinhard exercise impeccable critical faculties throughout this impressive analysis.— Matthew Hills, University of Huddersfield, author of The Pleasures of Horror

Christopher and I are extremely proud of this book (not to mention humbled by these gushing reviews), and we believe it represents an important contribution to the area of film studies by examining a subgenre of horror cinema that has received little scholarly attention. We hope you find this book both interesting and useful as it helps you think about films that depict possession and exorcism.

NOTE: We just got our print copies, and Christopher found a mistake. On p. 13, the wrong word is used in discussing queer theory. The sentence “Queer theorists challenge the idea of homosexuality as a biological necessity…” should read “Queer theorists challenge the idea of heterosexuality as a biological necessity…” Our apologies for the incorrect word; somehow during the revising process things got switched, and we wanted to make certain it was clearly stated here the tenets of queer theory.

]]>https://playingwithresearch.com/2016/11/01/exorcism-cinema-book-published/feed/09781498519090carrielynnreinhard9781498519090Possessed Women, Haunted States by Christopher J. OlsonThe Pop Culture Lens: Being John Malkovichhttps://playingwithresearch.com/2016/10/31/the-pop-culture-lens-being-john-malkovich/
https://playingwithresearch.com/2016/10/31/the-pop-culture-lens-being-john-malkovich/#respondTue, 01 Nov 2016 01:03:58 +0000http://playingwithresearch.com/?p=3685]]>In the thirtieth episode of The Pop Culture Lens podcast, Christopher Olson (Seems Obvious to Me) and I conclude the Halloween season by welcoming friend of the podcast, and fellow podcaster, Jim Laczkowski to discuss the existential film, Being John Malkovich (1999).

In this episode, our conversation considers how the film portrays insecurity, which is a common theme in screenwriter Charlie Kaufman’s works. Beyond that, we consider how existential the film is in its treatment of insecurity, gender, identity, and the meaning of life.

Ultimately, the discussion determines that the message of the movie focuses on how people need to develop empathy and connect with those around them, otherwise existential horrors could be anyone’s fate. I think it is a horror movie, because of how scary the last scene in the movie is. If you haven’t seen the movie, you really owe it to yourself to do so before listening to this discussion — and then listen to see if you agree with our interpretation of it.

]]>https://playingwithresearch.com/2016/10/31/the-pop-culture-lens-being-john-malkovich/feed/0being-john-malkovichcarrielynnreinhardCome Work With Me!https://playingwithresearch.com/2016/10/18/come-work-with-me/
https://playingwithresearch.com/2016/10/18/come-work-with-me/#respondTue, 18 Oct 2016 14:00:40 +0000http://playingwithresearch.com/?p=3676]]>We are seeking applicants for an Assistant Professor in Corporate Communication position to start the fall of 2017.

We are looking for someone who can teach interpersonal, intercultural and/or organizational communication.

The successful applicant will supervise the undergraduate discipline, work with long-time adjuncts, and build on links forged with Dominican’s Brennan School of Business, ELS language service and other stakeholders. We desire a specialist in communication between and among individuals and groups within organizations and external publics.

In this episode, the conversation considers how prescient and thus still relevant this thirty-three year-old film is. We three consider how the film depicts common fears whenever a new communication technology is introduced as it draws on media theories and concepts in its horrific depiction of a man succumbing to the “new flesh.” Concerns over misogyny and misandry, hyperreality and reality, and conservative versus progress ideologies inform this discussion as they consider how the film’s message may be even more important for today’s media saturated world.

Many thanks goes out to production assistant, Jean-Michel Berthiaume, for helping produce this episode.

As always, you are encouraged to become a part of this conversation by visiting any of the podcast’s social media sites. You can also talk with Christopher Olson on Twitter (@chrstphrolson) and at his academic blog seemsobvioustome.wordpress.com. And you can talk to me on Twitter (@mediaoracle).

]]>https://playingwithresearch.com/2016/10/17/the-pop-culture-lens-discusses-videodrome/feed/0mv5bmtqyodq0oty4m15bml5banbnxkftztcwmtk2odyymq-_v1_carrielynnreinhardThe Exorcist on Foxhttps://playingwithresearch.com/2016/09/24/the-exorcist-on-fox/
https://playingwithresearch.com/2016/09/24/the-exorcist-on-fox/#respondSat, 24 Sep 2016 15:21:28 +0000http://playingwithresearch.com/?p=3646]]>Christopher Olson (Seems Obvious to Me) and I have been working on a project analyzing the portrayal of exorcism in cinema for the past several years. That project is about to reach fruition with the publication of our book Possessed Women, Haunted States: Cultural Tensions in Exorcism Cinema from Lexington Books this November 15th (https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781498519090).

In the book we argue that the 1973 film The Exorcist provided the foundation for a narrative around which an entire horror subgenre developed. In our book we argue that this “traditional exorcism narrative” deals with non-dominant groups (i.e. women, people of color, non-heteronomative individuals) gaining power through possession but then being suppressed through the act of exorcism. Because of the importance of this film, when we heard the Fox television network was developing The Exorcist series, we knew we would have to pay it special attention.

Overall, the first episode seems to set the foundation for a story that aligns with the traditional exorcism narrative, as well as building on exorcism movies that came out after 9/11. There is potential for some truly creepy imagery and themes — the whole eye thing freaks me out — but the pacing is very rushed right now. The mystery seems less about one individual being possessed and more about a demonic conspiracy. This type of storyline would work if the number of episodes were restricted — such as on HBO or Netflix, where a season only runs 8 to 13 episodes. If the series is meant to be the standard length of broadcast networks, then this storyline will be dragged and padded out too much, dulling the horrific impact of its imagery and themes.

It remains to be seen how the season will unfold. I will keep watching, but I am hoping it gets scarier. Any show that claims to be a successor to the scariest horror movie of all times needs to deliver on those scares.

In this episode, the conversation considers how Sinatra’s identity changed through the various stages of his career, but also how those changes were under his control as he worked to create a celebrity identity focused on masculinity and American mythos. Throughout the years, his ability to control his identity led to an iconic performance, leading him to embody what it meant to be a man in the mid-20th century. Interestingly, his celebrity identity resembles performances seen in contemporary boy bands and singers, and their ability to make fangirls squee in delight.

One note: in the episode, Christopher discusses a Sinatra album as his recommendation that was in fact part of a trilogy that Sinatra produced in 1980. You can find more information at that venerable source of facts, Wikipedia, in this article.

Many thanks goes out to production assistant, Jean-Michel Berthiaume, for helping produce this episode.

]]>https://playingwithresearch.com/2016/09/13/the-pop-culture-lens-on-frank-sinatra/feed/01119377_1280x720carrielynnreinhardIdentification with Favorite Media Personaehttps://playingwithresearch.com/2016/09/13/identification-with-favorite-media-personae/
https://playingwithresearch.com/2016/09/13/identification-with-favorite-media-personae/#respondTue, 13 Sep 2016 15:24:40 +0000http://playingwithresearch.com/?p=3613]]>I presented this study at my first International Communication Association conference inMay 2005. It was the first major study I did by myself in graduate school. I remember making these slides to show on a projector — there was no PowerPoint! I should probably revisit it.

Identification with Favorite Media Personae: A phenomenologically-informed conceptualization of audience viewers’ reasons for identifying with mediated fictional and real individuals.

Purpose: To explore the hows and whys adolescents and adults identify with people they only know of through media consumption (i.e. media personae, either real or fictional).

Background:

Confusion as to what is this concept of identification, and how does it relate to/differ from: parasocial interaction, empathy, homophily, role models, etc.

Most of research has been conducted on children, taking Feilitzen and Linné’s bifurcation of similarity and wishful identification types.

Because of the Focus on Children:

Very few interview-based research approached, opting instead for scales and survey questions, both open- and close-ended

Focus for basis of identification been on appearance and overt behavior.

Reasons for Conducting this Study:

Applicability of identifying with media personae as a basis for identity formation, both personal and social.

Possibility of older individuals identifying based on more abstract levels of information, such as psychological (personality, attitudes, etc.) and situational.

Test of the occurrences of similarity and wishful identifications among older individuals, based on Feilitzen and Linné’s initial suggestions.

To gather interviews and thus more phenomenologically-informed data from a large group of individuals.

My Hypotheses:

H1: Adolescents and adults, if they do indicate perceived similarity between themselves and the persona, will be more likely to describe this similarity as being psychological or situational rather than physical or behavioral.

H2a: As per von Feilitzen and Linné (1975), adolescents and adults will be more likely to describe their identification with media personae as incorporating a desire to be even more like the person (wishful identification) rather than just a perception of currently being like the person (similarity identification).

H2b: As per Hoffner and Cantor (1991), adolescents and adults will describe their identification with media personae as incorporating both similarity identification and wishful identification.

“If you had to describe this person (their selected media persona) to someone who doesn’t know him or her, what would you say?”

“What about this person makes you identify with them?”

Additional questions about parasocial interaction, role models, imitation, media use

Results Study 1:

All participants indicated they perceived the persona to be similar to them in some way

1 purely Behavioral similarity

6 on Psychological similarity, along with:

1 Behavioral, 4 Physical, 5 Situational

“Joey Tribbiani” (Friends) “When he deals with problems or everyday life, in general, I see a lot of myself in him…He still gets by and makes it and that’s sorta been the story of my life.”

“Sailor Moon” (Bishojo Senshi Sailor Moon) “…I think some of the thing of her being a double, being this superhero in disguise but also being this like normal…teenager just kind of, it sorta like plays on it that that’s who she is, but people don’t see it and they don’t believe it, and I think that could, that is me in a lot of ways, because only a very, very few people actually know me and understand me and know what I am capable of…”

6 participants indicated the person served as an inspiration for their own lives, and often this discussion of inspiration was related to wishfulness.

The participants disagreed that they were directly imitating the characters, only that they were inspired by what the characters did.

“Emily Quartermaine” (General Hospital) “…they say what they want to say, they stand up for what they believe in, they don’t back down. I wish more people – I wish I could be more like that.”

“Joey Tribbiani” “Could be a role model, as a sign that if this person can do it I can do it. Might be a different way of looking at a role model because, you know if you are seeing this guy as that type of role model, if he can do it I can make it, and if that’s your anchor of hope or determination factor…that’s totally different from looking at someone and being like, man, I want to be him.”

The person may be engaging in wishful identification with this individual because the persona is inspiring them to improve upon themselves in some fashion, either by becoming more like the persona or learning from that persona’s success or failures

H3: Inspiration will be more prevalent if a person describes their identification as being a desire to be more similar to the persona (wishful identification).

Study 2:

Participants: 207 individuals, as such;

1 Child (12 years or younger)

24 Teenagers (13 to 18 years old)

130 Young Adults (19 to 29 years old)

47 Adults (over 30 years old)

Questionnaire of 6 items, with both open and close-ended components

Open-ended components were thematically analyzed for presence of Similarity, Wishfulness, Inspiration and other themes.

Likert scale for agreement with statement, then request for explanation of answer to Likert scale

To measure Similarity: “I identify with this person because I see similarities between myself and he/she”, “I like to do the things the person does” and “I see a lot of myself in this person”

To measure Inspiration: “The person I identify with inspires me” and “I can learn how to handle things in my life by watching the person”

To measure Wishfulness: “I would like to be the person I identify with”

Found during coding, counter comments to this statements became a new theme labeled “Satisfaction with Self”, defined as any discussion of being content with oneself with little or no desire to be another person

Results Study 2:

Of the media personae named, 155 were real people and 52 were fictional characters.

Presence of Themes:

Psychological had the highest average presence, Behavioral had the second highest. Physical had the lowest average, with Situational slightly higher.

The Inspiration theme occurred in nearly 75% of the sample, whereas the Wishfulness theme occurred only about 50%.

As the age group increased, the frequency of both Psychological and Situational themes tended to increase.

Support for H1.

Wishfulness Across Age Groups:

Young Adults had a slight tendency for indicating the Wishfulness theme (53%).

Teenagers were more likely to indicate the Wishfulness theme in their discussion of identification (75%).

Adults were less likely (42%).

Wishfulness vs. Similarity Identification:

Wishfulness was negatively correlated with Psychological, Situational, and the amount of Similarity themes.

Combined with age group distribution indicates wishful identification may peak during adolescence but then decrease while abstract similarity comparisons on psychological and situational factors may increase similarity identification.

Partial support for H2a.

Additionally, of the total number of respondents (n=207), 95 (46%) reported a pure Similarity identification without Wishfulness, 6 (3%) indicted a pure Wishfulness identification, and 106 (51%) indicated that both types of themes were present in their discussion of identifying with their chosen media persona.

Some support for H2b.

Wishfulness and Other Themes

Inspiration was more likely if the individual engaged in wishful identification with the persona than if just similarity identification.

Support for H3.

When Wishfulness was present in the responses, Satisfaction with Self occurred less frequently than expected, and this relationship reverses when Wishfulness was not present.

Theoretical implications:

While von Feilitzen and Linné (1975) would be correct in asserting that wishfulness is more likely among older individuals, as it peaked in this sample amongst the teenagers, Hoffner and Cantor (1991) would be as correct because perceptions of similarity appear to be feeding the desire to be even more similar, perhaps because the persona who is seen as similar is also a source of inspiration, whom one aspires to be like.

von Feilitzen and Linné only applied their bifurcation of identification to children, whereas this sample consisted largely of teenagers, young adults and adults.

Teenagers could still be applied to the researchers’ hypothesis about older children, whereas the young adult and adult groups should be considered as a different group, as they are theoretically at the end stages of identity formation (Erikson, 1968; Marcia, 1993).

More research is needed focusing directly on teenagers.

Refocus from state of identification to process of identification

Related components discussed in this study indicate need to:

Further elaborate/differentiate the concept of the state of identifying with another; and/or,

Clarify process of identifying where the state is the end result

Proposal for a process of identification as involving:

Interaction between the identifier and identified wherein the identifier perceives some level of similarity with the identified (based on past, present and/or future self-concepts)

Then this interaction, dependent on mediating or moderating factors, produces within the identifier some level of desire to be even more similar to the identified, resulting in either:

Pure Similarity Identification: seeing the identified as similar to some present or past aspect of the self

Wishful Identification: seeing the identified as similar to some future potential or desired self

Should either past or present similarity perceptions be combined with future potential/desire, then both Similarity and Wishful Identification could occur

The outcome type of identification achieved would impact the effect the media persona and hence the media itself.

Limitations and Directions for the Future:

Limitations:

Participants’ discussions were not allowed to deviate into other possible definitions of identification.

Age group, ethnic and gender subsample sizes were uneven, preventing more rigorous statistical investigation and comparison

While intracoder reliability across time and test samples, external verification of presence and definition of themes should occur

Questions to ponder:

Does the proposed model for the process of identification occur regardless of who the identifier or identified are?

Do certain types of similarity (physical, behavioral, psychological, situational) impact the co-occurrence of wishfulness? Or is wishfulness related to the strength of the similarity?

What are the possible moderators between the occurrences of either similarity or wishful identification, and their co-occurrence?

Does having some level of both similarity and wishful components make some individuals more susceptible than others to the persuasion of a celebrity sales pitch?

How does the type of identification influence how likely an individual is to use that persona when they are developing their sense of self?

In this episode, the conversation focuses on the film’s position as a transnational and transcultural pop culture text that acts as a link in a chain connecting different cultures, nations and time periods. Inspired by American pop culture, the film would go on to inspire Italian, Japanese and American pop culture, showing how truly globalized the world became after World War II. Additionally, the discussion gets a tad heated when it delves into the consideration of Kurosawa as a fan and Yojimbo as fan fiction.

Many thanks goes out to production assistant, Jean-Michel Berthiaume, for helping produce this episode.

As always, you are encouraged to become a part of this conversation by visiting any of the podcast’s social media sites. You can also talk with Christopher Olson on Twitter (@chrstphrolson) and at his academic blog seemsobvioustome.wordpress.com. And you can talk to me on Twitter (@mediaoracle).